


Nimaley

by Ailette



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Christmas fic, Imported, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2014-08-28
Packaged: 2018-02-15 03:51:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2214720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ailette/pseuds/Ailette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The TARDIS takes matters in her hands since the Doctor refuses to step outside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nimaley

“When is it Christmas?” the Doctor asked into the empty room, half expecting his TARDIS to actually answer him. Whoever had told him that he couldn’t handle being alone for too long without going insane had a point. The TARDIS, after all, had long since given up on responding to him. His brows furrowed. When had that started? He remembered her when she was lively and easy to handle, answering to his every emotion as he first bonded with her. So much had happened since then; so many people had come and gone. He’d been so busy wallowing in whatever emotion had just caught his fancy that, somewhere along the way, he’d lost his most loyal companion without even noticing.

Sighing quietly, he slid into the too comfortable chair behind him, eyes locked on the console. The seemingly irrelevant question was still bouncing around inside his head. Of course, technically he knew when Christmas was. And Hanukkah. Solstice. Yalda Night. Eid. Kwanzaa. Whatever name, religion or festivity was celebrated on earth in winter time. Or their countless counterparts throughout the galaxy. He knew when most of them took place, had taken place or would take place throughout history. He could go to any one of them whenever he liked (and the TARDIS cooperated). He had done it in the past and was sure he’d do it again soon enough, but… it just wasn’t the same. See, the thing about more or less living in the void instead of a linear timeline made festivities seem very dull (after all, nothing stopped you from attending a different Sylvester Party every day for the same year). They just weren’t special anymore.

So, the basic question wasn’t: When is it Christmas? But rather: Am I in the mood for Christmas right now? Annoyed with his own brain for not letting him just enjoy the advantages of time travel, he glared into the empty control room. It didn’t do him any good when he was completely alone. On the other hand, he just wasn’t ready for another companion, another piece of history he stole just yet. He hadn’t been for… what was it now? Had it already been more than two months since he’d last left the safety of his TARDIS? Maybe it was time to get out again. Get out, get back into the game.

Determined, he sprang to his feet and marched over to the console, stretched out his hand to hit the lever and… stopped. He wasn’t sure where he wanted to go; when he wanted to go. Watching his hand waver undecidedly over the mass of buttons and levers, he sighed and turned around, away from it all. He would go out eventually. Just not today.

Centimetres away from reaching the corridor, something weird happened. The floor suddenly started vibrating, not so slowly developing into a violent jerking and shuddering. He swirled around to throw a look back and saw his suspicions confirmed: the TARDIS had locked onto a date and place and was now rapidly making her way there. Again, he stretched out his hand in front of him, but the TARDIS chose that exact moment to make a violent turn that made the Doctor fly halfway across the room.

Pressed to the ground by an invisible force, he willed his head up to see at least the coordinates, but the screen was outside of his range of vision. What the hell was going on? He hadn’t even touched anything—had he? With a loud and oddly final sounding _whoosh_ the TARDIS came to a halt, doors behind him flying open and letting a cold breeze into the well-heated room. Carefully, the Doctor got up, not risking to move too much before he knew what was going on, but his plans where foiled when something soft flew straight into his hands and he was subsequently pushed out of the TARDIS and into a heap of snow. Solid wooden doors snapped shut right in front of his eyes.

Disbelievingly, he stared at them for a good minute before he finally lowered his gaze down into his lap where his favourite brown coat and a very familiar old and ridiculously long and colourful scarf rested. Frowning, he looked up again. She must have really been upset with him to throw him out like this. He couldn’t even remember the last time she had done that! (Okay, so maybe she had done it a couple of times in his sixth regeneration, but that had been understandable.)

He shivered a little as a biting breeze made the snow around him swirl. Right. No use crying over spilt milk. Now that he was here—wherever or whenever here might be—he might as well look around for a bit. The scarf was just as comfortable as he remembered it, smelling of old adventures and a time when he thought it to be fashionable. He smiled. Well, it wasn’t like he cared all that much about what strangers thought of him anyway.

The TARDIS had landed just outside a small village, snow covered roads leading up through little houses to a bigger square, barely visible in the distance. At first, he thought this might be a settlement, but there was no movement to be spotted through any of the windows he passed. There were no people to be seen either. Only when he reached the square, people seemed to suddenly pop up everywhere. It weren’t just humans, either, but visitors from all over the galaxy. Stepping out of little archways, landing on the ground or just appearing out of thin air, they all shared the same determined expression. And they all seemed to know exactly where they were; everyone of them heading into a specific direction, never minding the other visitors and easily passing them. It was eerily beautiful to watch. It all seemed to move with a distinct rhythm, leaving only the Doctor standing in their midst, oblivious to the heavenly music they were following.

A bitter smile crossed the Doctor’s features as he observed the spectacle. This seemed like an ongoing pattern in his life now; being the one who got left out. Indecisively he stood there for a few more minutes, just watching and burying his hands deeper into his coat pockets. He had just decided to go back to the TARDIS when he suddenly saw something wrong in the otherwise perfectly outplayed symphony before him. Someone else had stopped, refusing to just fall into step or maybe just as unable to hear the common music as the Doctor was, he didn’t know. But it awoke his interest and finally made his feet move forward, through the crowd and towards that unknown someone.

The figure was too far away for him to properly see, just a dark patch that now turned from him and started to walk away, following one of the little streets leading away from the square and other people. The Doctor’s steps accelerated immediately, abruptly overcome by an illogical fear to lose sight of the other person. It seemed to be a man, judging by the short sandy brown hair he could now make out in the distance. The stranger was wearing a long black coat, not unlike the Doctor’s and definitively in human fashion. As the Doctor fell into an easy jog and then into an outright run, he could feel the cold air rushing by, refusing every so often to enter his lungs. The stranger was faster than him, even though he never seemed to change his pace. If the Doctor hadn’t already been suspecting this to be a different kind of meeting, the chase would have been a dead giveaway.

“Oi!” he finally shouted, not knowing where he took the spare air to speak from as he never faltered in his step. “You there—hey! Wait!” To his utter surprise, the stranger actually did stop. He didn’t turn around, but the Doctor was finally able to reach him. Pretty out of breath and his hearts beating painfully fast in his chest, he came to a halt just beside the stranger. He took the time to force some air into his lungs before he straightened up enough to get a look at the other man at last.

“Master.” The word hung in the air between them, sounding empty and full of surprise at the same time. Because the Doctor hadn’t known who he was running after, would have deemed it impossible if someone had told him, and yet he had always known who he was following. There had only ever been one person he had to chase and yet never seemed to get any closer to.

The other Time Lord turned his head, brown eyes looking the Doctor up and down before they slowly seemed to come alive again. “Doctor.”

He sensed that they were about to fall back into their centuries old game of taunting and provoking and had to stop it immediately. They couldn’t just fall back into it this time. Their last parting had been too… different for that.

“What are you doing here? How can you even be here?” His hands flew up into the air to underline the importance of his questions. “Where _is_ here?”

One elegant eyebrow arched up, accompanied by a slight smirk. “Why, my dear Doctor, you don’t even know where you’ve gotten yourself this time? Not that I should be surprised by that. You always had a tendency to get into trouble by not knowing what it is you’re doing.” The smirk grew wider.

The Doctor was taken a little aback. Something wasn’t right. “I don’t…” he stopped himself before the Master would start laughing in his face over his own stupidity. You never respond to the Master’s taunting, the only possible outcome was madness. No, he had to get to the core of what he said. “So, you don’t know where you are either.”

The smirk was wiped of the Master’s face to be soon replaced by a disdainful expression. “Don’t just make your childish assumptions. We’re at Nimaley. Remember that?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! Nimaley is just another one of those myths they used to taunt us with in the Academy, it’s no truer than the…” His breath hitched softly as he left the sentence hanging unfinished. But the damage was already done.

“Please don’t stop _there_. You were just making my point for me,” the Master said, voice far too gentle for the mocking tone he was using. “Nimaley is no more true than _Toclafane_ are.”

The Doctor shuddered at the mere mention of the murderous and will-less creatures the Master had brought to life. But Nimaley was something else entirely. The hidden winter planet where hope was born and wishes fulfilled to those who yearned desperately enough. It was unreachable, since no one knew the coordinates and Rassilon was supposed to be the only Time Lord to have ever been there. It was a myth. Nothing more. If it really existed, than his most heartfelt desire would have to come true.

He couldn’t seem to raise his gaze from the ground back up to where the Master’s eyes were boring into him. What _was_ his most heartfelt desire?

“Nimaley doesn’t exist,” he said sternly, but it sounded weak even to his own ears and the Master let out a barking laugh.

“Now you’re just trying to convince yourself.”

“But… if… If this was real and my,” he swallowed audibly. “If this was real, then what is it you were wishing for? And… how did you get here?”

The Doctor jumped as an arm slung itself around his shoulder and a hand gently cupped his chin, forcing him to finally meet the Master’s eyes. “I’m here because you wished for nothing more than to have me back after I died in your arms.”

For a short lived and blissful moment, the Doctor allowed himself to just take in the fact that he’d brought the Master back. But as always with the Master, he understood the true meaning behind those words all too well. His eyes narrowed and he swatted at the hand on his face, stepping out of the Master’s immediate range with shaking fists.

“You planned this. You knew what would happen, you manipulated me and… You made me watch you die so you could come here?” The anger in his voice surprised himself. Why was he even surprised? The Master always betrayed him, one way or another. It shouldn’t still hurt this much. “I _begged_ for you to regenerate and you laughed at me! I had to watch you die. Again! After I had just found you and you just… You were just playing one of your stupid cruel games! What was the point in all this? Tell me! Why would you choose to die and be reborn if you could just stay alive? That doesn’t even make any sense! You’re completely insane!”

Before he could take another step away from him, the Master grabbed the Doctor and propelled him forward, hands firmly planted on either side of his head, demanding to be let in. The Doctor was too surprised by the sudden action, too emotional to get his defenses up in time. He thrashed feverishly, desperately trying to get the hands off his head, to get the Master away from him, to end this before it even started. But the Master was stronger than him, simply holding him in place and not moving an inch. His next words were softly spoken and the Doctor shuddered even more as he heard them whispered into his ear.

“That’s exactly the reason.”

With one final crack he felt all his mental barriers come down, allowing the Master easy access into his mind. He tried to steel himself for what was about to come, excruciating pain, pictures of Gallifrey as it burned, civilisations exterminated with a graceful smile and he went slack in the Master’s arms, falling forward as he clenched his eyes shut.

The pain never came.

Instead, there was silence, a terrible nothingness that scared him for a second until he realized that there was truly nothing there to hurt him or remind him of all the things he’d done. Just… silence. Peaceful silence. And after a few more moments, he could feel the hands moving away from his head, one softly running through his hair as the sound of the world around them slowly started to filter in again.

Still dazed, the Doctor blinked his eyes open and tried to focus on the Master again, not succeeding since his head seemed to be buried in the Master’s chest. Distinctly, he was aware of the hand still caressing his scalp, but his mind was too busy getting everything back in order to process that bit of information.

“Do you understand now? Did you hear it? It’s gone. Absolute silence. Nothing but my own voice dictating my actions.”

That seemed like something of significance and the Doctor opened his mouth, only to close it again after realising that he didn’t know what language he was currently speaking. The Master didn’t seem to notice and just carried on.

“That doesn’t mean a whole lot will change for you, of course. I’m still the Master and nothing will ever change me. Nothing will ever control my actions other than my own will. But the drums… They became so loud, Doctor. I could barely hear myself thinking anymore. Most of the time, they completely drowned me out. I had to get back to myself… my own madness is by far enough for me.” A low chuckle escaped his throat and the Doctor allowed himself to marvel at the sound for just a few moments. He had the sinking feeling that he knew how this was going to end, it always ended the same way after all and if he was right, he didn’t have a whole lot of time left to listen to the Master’s mesmerizing voice.

“Do you know why only Rassilon has ever come here, my dear Doctor? Because he discovered a secret. Once you get your greatest wish fulfilled, you don’t just get sent home like all the other creatures. No, if you’re a Time Lord, there will be something waiting for you to bring you back to wherever it is you came from. Now, look at that. Isn’t she a beauty?”

The Doctor blinked again, this time managing to take in the classical red English telephone box in front of them. He didn’t need to be told what it was; he could feel the TARDIS even through his fogged mind. What had the Master done to him? It never took this long to recover from a forceful entry and yet he felt drugged.

“I would offer you a ride, but I know how jealous your old lady can be. So instead, I’m just going to let you rest here until you’re all better.” Carefully, he sat the Doctor down against the picket fence next to them. He crouched in front of his best enemy for a few more thoughtful moments, just looking at the other Time Lord. “And then you can sprint back to her and start following me across the galaxy again.”

The blinding grin the Master had on his face was the last thing the Doctor could remember later for sure. He slipped into unconsciousness as soon as the Master left his sight and he wasn’t even certain if he still heard the calming whooshes the TARDIS made as she left or just imagined it, just like the gentle pressing of lips to his forhead with a mumbled “Until next time.”

**Author's Note:**

> (Originally posted at http://ailette.livejournal.com/33920.html)  
> Beta: As always, thanks to the wonderful freakydarling !  
> A/N: This was written before the Christmas Special aired (crazy late with posting this, I know v.v;) so it's taking place after the last episode of season 4. Oh, yeah, and this was written for morgulq . I hope you like it! :)


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